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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28258746">A Chapter of Scarlet</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrsonZedd/pseuds/OrsonZedd'>OrsonZedd</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Knowledge Esoterica [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Emmy The Robot (Webcomic)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:55:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28258746</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrsonZedd/pseuds/OrsonZedd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Scarlet has been sent to about the strangest family in this, or any other, universe.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Knowledge Esoterica [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Chapter of Scarlet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So I've been working on the next arc of my preëxisting story, The Book that Eats, and I probably shouldn't write two parts of the story at the same time but here we are.  Anyway, I wanted this to be a bit of a preview of the world in this story, as each part will feature a different fandom universe.  It does have some spoilers for where that story is going to go, but if you don't care about spoilers (and you shouldn't) or don't care about that story (and you don't), then you're golden.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A Chapter of Scarlet<br/>	She was built with bright red hair running the length of her shoulder, with her bangs swept to her left.  The hair had been harvested from a donor just like the hair of all of her brothers and sisters.  It gave them a very human feel to an otherwise stiff, enamel colored exterior.  That was the purpose of their cheeks as well, to give some color to their face.  Though the Sterling Corporation offered a wider range of choice in eye colors, she was an off the shelf model, chosen at random, and her eyes were blue like those of every nandroid not made to order.  <br/>	One thing every Sterling robot had in common, however, was their perfection.  All were perfectly made, all were perfectly obedient, all were eager to meet their new charges that would be assigned to them after John Sterling finished his speech.  Sadly he couldn't be there to deliever the speech in person.  There had been pressing matters in their offices in Zurich.  However the telecast had not abated the excitement Scarlet and her kin felt about hearing their creator address them.<br/>	“Who did you get?” Scarlet asked Violet, her neighbor.  Violet had dirty blonde hair held in a bun on the back after a slight accident with a mixer and emergency haircut. <br/>	“Javier and Mea Alvarez in Ingham, Michigama.  Javier is a lawyer and Mea has a cooking show, oh wow.  They have a two year old.” Violet replied.<br/>	“Are you nervious?” Scarlet asked.<br/>	“Not on your life.  I relish a challenge.  What about you?”<br/>	“Oh huh, Ingham, Michigama too.  I got, no way, John Steven Jones, author, and his wife Marianne Lilande Jones, quantum physicist.  No kids.”<br/>	“The I, Robot guy?  That's not fair.  You get to be part of Robbie's family.”<br/>	“I seriously dout Robbie is a real android, Violet.  Besides, you have a child to care for.  That's wonderful.”<br/>	“Hm, well at least you'll be in the neighborhood so I can size you up.”<br/>	“This isn't a competition.”<br/>	“It is now!”<br/>* * *</p><p>	"Steven, Lilande, I would like you to meet Scarlet." Rolon touched on her left hand, above her pinky finger, where the sticker said, 'touch to activate'.<br/>	Her dark eyes began to glow bright blue, and her innards began to hum gently, quietly in the night.<br/>	"Good morning Jones family! My name is Scarlet it's an honor to meet you."  She curtsied and walked up to Steven.  "You must be John Steven Jones.  It's really an honor to meet you finally.  I read all your books as soon as I got the assignment.  I especially loved the one about the time travelling hunters."<br/>	Upon hearing the gynoid mention his, perhaps, least favorite book ever, he replied, "I'm glad someone enjoyed it."<br/>	"And you must be Dr. Marianne Lilande Jones.  I must admit, I don't understand anything about your work in quantum field theory, but I'm sure it's very important."<br/>	"I think that puts you in very good company," Lilly replied.<br/>	The nandroid looked to the unusually well groomed Rolon, "I'm afraid I don't recognize you at all sir."<br/>	"I'm their butler, Rolon Quiggins, madame.  I recently shaved." Scarlet couldn't place Rolon's British accent.  It had a bit of Liverpool, Yorkshire, and Scottish.  She didn't want to call it out as an affectation but was thinking it very loudly.<br/>	"I hope I'm not introuding.  I don't want you to feel outmodded."<br/>	"I assure you, madame, I'm glad to have you as part of the team.  I have some vacation time coming up soon and I very much needed the assistance."<br/>	Scarlet's cheeks glowed brighter on hearing this.  "I can't wait to learn from you."<br/>	"For now let's excort the sir and madame to their room.  They've had quite a rough night and could use some rest."<br/>	Steven and Lilly tried to protest but lacked the energy.  Scarlet could scarcely imagine what must have happened to have run them so ragged but decided it would be best to follow Rolon's lead, as he had seniority, and with the masters of the house tucked away, they could speak.<br/>	“How long have you worked for the Joneses?” Yeah, that was a good question to warm up to the old man.<br/>	“I suppose that depends on how you percieve time,” Rolon replied.<br/>	“I'm sorry?”<br/>	“Is time an arrow or a series of causal events?” Rolon 'clarified'.<br/>	“The... latter?”<br/>	“Then I've been working for them for, oh, 2166 years.”<br/>	“You're putting me on,” she replied.<br/>	“Scarlet, I don't need you to believe me.  I just need to protect those two.  Their circumstances, the reason they're here, is all my fault, and I want to make sure they're safe for the rest of their lives.  Will you help me with that?”<br/>	Scarlet's cheeks began to glow from a bit of personal pride, “Absolutely.”</p><p>	The thing about nandroids, and any automaton that requires constant input is that they tend to, until told otherwise, work at their tasks.  This was once called the Sorcerer's Apprentice problem by someone, but no one at Sterling had seen Fantasia.<br/>	Scarlet followed the older man into his quarters, a modest room covered in papers; newspaper clippings, print-outs from dot-matrix-style printers, handwritten notes, and a map covered in pins with red strings connecting them to each other.  Rolon swirled the desk chair away from his bureau and exhaled deeply.<br/>	"Are these your quarters?  They're a right mess, Quiggins."<br/>	Rolon yelled in surprise, "Jesus Christ, need to put a bell on you, Scarlet."<br/>	"But if these are your quarters, where's your bed?  How are you going to sleep?" the nandroid continued.<br/>	Rolon rubbed his face. "I guess I should have activated you to explain all this already.  How much do you know about, um," Rolon had to search, "the Greek theory of Atomism?"<br/>	The nandroid shook her head.  That was annoying.<br/>	"You know what the universe is?"<br/>	"The entirity of space and time and everything in it."<br/>	"Yeah, so uh, not so much.  It turns out, there's other universes too and well, to put things simply, I'm from one, and Steven and Lilande are, well, they're from another."  Rolon was a little proud of how concise his explanation was.<br/>	"I don't believe you," Scarlet replied.  In her defense, Rolon thought, in her position he might have a hard time swallowing it too.  He pondered, how do you prove something to someone who doesn't, or can't, believe you.  Well, he decided, the best way would be to show them.<br/>	"Scarlet, hold my hand real quick," Rolon commanded.  She did, basically instinctively, and immediately her sensors registered a shift in her orientation, locking her joints up to prevent damage and, almost as quickly as they'd locked down, unlocking.  In the sky, the sun oppressed everything below it.  Her temperature sensor changed immediately noticed an increase of temperature form 20 centigrade to 84 centigrade.  All around them was sand and rock, tanned and bleached white by the oppressive star hanging low in the sky.  No clouds in the sky gave them shade, but near the sun the sky was blood red with dust.<br/>	"What in the world?  Where are we?" her voice didn't share the level of panic she was really feeling.<br/>	"Oh we didn't go anywhere.  We're in, roughly, the same spot in your universe, in Michigama, but it's the year 2 Billion.  I wanted something more interesting but this was the only node I could find that I know will take us back.  Wish it was night.  The solar wind is so strong now, you get auroras everywhere and the magnetic field is so weak, they're super close too."<br/>	Scarlet's sensors detected the same shift in orientation, locking up again, as the room around them immedately reformed.  "I think I need to charge."<br/>	"Oh yeah, that's probably a good idea.  Keeping your in your box like that for half a year probably drained your battery a little.  Let's go set up your charging station."<br/>	“Wait, it's summer?” she asked.  “Why didn't you activate me sooner?”<br/>	“Steven and Lilly didn't arrive in this world until this morning, and, I dunno, I didn't want you to be lonely,” this, Scarlet believed.  Rolon had been able to evade her lie detection so far, but this seemed genuine.<br/>	“You said they're from another world, but they have books and--”<br/>	“Their world was destroyed, not exclusively but partly by my hubris.  I've set this life up for them so they might at least have... something, if not just each other.  I didn't want them to have to rough it in the slums or live in the woods, or be part of some culture where they had no useful skills and couldn't contribute.  I took Steven's favorite books and make him their author.  I, well, everything Lilly did was her own doing but I had to replicate a lot of studies so I could reprint her thesis.  I did it because I love them, and whatever you think of me, can I just ask you to please, love them just as much?”<br/>	And that requestion, Scarlet agreed, she could do.</p><p>* * *</p><p>	The following day after the Joneses had been sent to bed, Rolon set up a chess board, eager to try his skills at a perfect thinking machine.  He hadn't played any games since the Royal Game of Ur with Cain in his last universe, and was a bit worried he'd be out of skill.  It was a valid concern, as he lost the first game quite quickly.  The second game he actually tried, trying his best to remember the time he beat the computer at battle chess, which was never, but the point here wasn't for him to win, and on the third game, he did something a bit strange.<br/>	“Sir, your king is in check, you only have one move, and then I'll just move my queen, at best I can offer you a draw.”<br/>	“I decline your invitation, Scarlet.”<br/>	“Mathematically, there is no way you win this.”<br/>	“That just belies a lack of creative thinking, Scarlet,” Rolon said before illegally moving his queen to check her king”<br/>	“Sir, that's an illegal move.”<br/>	“If you only play by the rules, you'll never win in life.”<br/>	“I get the feeling you don't like chess.”<br/>	Rolon shrugged, “I don't.  I don't like the idea that some pieces are more valuable than others, that some are basically worthless and maybe, if you're really lucky you'll manage to not die long enough to get a promotion.”<br/>	“Is there a game you do like?”<br/>	Rolon didn't have to think, “Mancala.  It's a game about saving for the winter”<br/>	“I don't believe I've ever played it,” Scarlet replied.<br/>	“You don't need much.  Just 48 seeds or... marbles... or bellybutton lints.”<br/>	“I don't have a bellybutton, and if I did, I can assure you it would be lint free,” Scarlet though, “I do believe we have some candies.”<br/>	“Go get them and I'll set up the board.”<br/>	When Scarlet returned she found a board with 14 divisions, two large ones on the sides and six sets of two in the middle.<br/>	“Put four candies in each of the smaller divisions, please,” and she did.  “So there are about fifty thousand different ways to play this game, but this is how I was taught to play it.  On your side of the board you select one of the sets of seeds, and sow them in the adjacent spots, including the sides.  The side to your right is your cache, and once a seed is there, it's yours.  However, if when you've set down your last seed, the two opposing sides have the same number of seeds, you may capture all of them and put them in your store.  Any questions?”<br/>	“Makes sense so far.  Let's begin.”<br/>	After the first game, the score was 26 to 22 in Rolon's favor.  The next game was also 26 to 22.  So was the game after that.  “Sir, if the two of us play optimally, the person who moves first will always win.”<br/>	“Instead of trying to win, how about you try not to lose?”</p><p>* * *</p><p>	Steven had worked into the evening trying to rig a power supply for his computer, but had to stop because it was getting late.  Though the hard part of powering the computer had been taken care of, now he needed to find a way to connect it to the dummy terminals, and that meant working on the dummy terminals.<br/>	"Ugh, I don't like it.  I miss my word processor," Steven complained as the electrical typewriter caught up to his last sentence.<br/>	"That is a word processor.  Where were you in the 70s?"<br/>	"My mom was graduating highschool, so there, I guess."<br/>	"So computers look like this in your world, huh?" Scarlet remarked.  She was afraid to touch the keyboard, not sure what would happen if she did anything.<br/>	"I mean, a lot of them.  Basically everything was a computer," Steven replied, and though he didn't emphasize 'was' he did linger on it a bit.<br/>	"It seems so complicated, what on earth were they used for?" Scarlet asked.<br/>	Lilly looked over her newspaper on the other side of the room, "Yelling at people you don't like and playing klondike solitaire."<br/>	Scarlet lit up, "I'm programmed to deal out Klondike solitaire, would you like to play a game?"<br/>	Lilly shook her head, "I'm not THAT bored."<br/>	Scarlet looked a little dejected, but understood that it probably wasn't nearly as pleasant as coffee and zoning out reading a newspaper covering affairs one had no context for.  There was an election this year and the two candidates were both heavily tied to the largest corporations in the country and Lilly was having a hell of a time finding anything remotely salvagable about either one, let alone trying to figure out where two fiscally rightwing candidates really stood with relation to her beliefs.  Fortunately there seemed to be quite a bit of acceptance of people based on race, sexual orientation, sexual identity, and religion, but that discrimination seemed to be turned, predominantly, to class.  There was another group, the augmented, who seemed to be shunned, people who were intigrated with some robotics.  That seemed unusual since the theraputic advantages of these complex robotics were obvious.<br/>	Then there was Scarlet, who could just about have been the intersectionality of both her expertise and Steven's.  His forté was computer science and there was a lot to want to know about how you create an AI, especially one so humanlike, but what Steven wanted to know is how you create an AI so small, especially in a world that hadn't been using transistors for computers.  Indeed there was a lower limit to the size of a transistor before the electrons just tunnel to the other side of it, and humans in her 2020s had hit it already.<br/>	"I've been thinking, it might be a good idea at some point to meet your neighbors," Scarlet mentioned.  Neighbors was a bit of a strong word, in fact, the Lilande estate was massive so "neighbors" meant the less rich, but still quite well to do people nearby.<br/>	Rolon consulted a calender, "That's a really good idea actually, I think we have the time to do that.  How are their civics lessons coming, Scarlet?"<br/>	"Pretty well, actually, though I think it might help them if they were to socialize with, ah, natives?"<br/>	Rolon shook his head, "If they make a mistake and don't know something, then they might come across as--bourgeois and disaffected, actually this is an extraordinarily good idea."<br/>	"Geez, Rolon, you make it sound like you want the entire neighborhood to think we're unsophistocated new money," Steven said.<br/>	"Exactly.  When one of you says something about President Donald Trump, I want them to assume you're either making a joke or literally don't know anything about anything."<br/>	"President who now?" asked Scarlet.<br/>	Steven and Lilande laughed for just a moment before realizing that, for all they knew, there was never a Donald Trump in this universe.<br/>	"No, exactly, that's what you do," Rolon replied.  "People will think you're a bit loopy but that's alright.  They won't take you seriously and they'll never cotton on to the truth about you."</p><p>* * *<br/>.<br/>	This dinner party had to happen.  If the two couldn't bullshit their way through a crowd of drunk rich dipshits who never listen to anyone's voice but themselves, they weren't gonna be able to do this ever.  Scarlet had gotten used to making some of the strange recipes that Rolon had saved from the wreckage of her owner's universe, they weren't that different after all, and the units were all, thankfully, the same, so there weren't any fractional cooking temperatures, decimal point measuring units, or just strange esoteric processes.<br/>	The whole neighborhood had really come together to lend a hand for the preparation, and Scarlet found herself in charge of a kitchen filled with other nandroids and botlers from at least three manufacturers.  With the arrival of the Alvarez family, Scarlet was excited to see her old friend again.  “Violet, how are you?”<br/>	Violet brushed a stray hair out of her face before putting on a hair net, “I was beginning to think you were dead, Scarlet.  What kept you?”<br/>	“The Joneses are very, ah, secretive.  Master Steven has too many fans, we wanted to keep things low profile.”<br/>	“Well, no need to worry.  Now that I'm here, this party is saved.  What are you making?” she asked to a Volkmann botler.<br/>	“It is called Chess Pie?” he said with his heavy German accent.<br/>	Violet began reading the ingredients off, “This is just egg custard, what's so chess about it?  Do important people die?”<br/>	“I don't much believe in the concept of a feudal hierarchy where some people are worth more than others, Violet,” Scarlet replied.<br/>	“What, do your owners not like losing?  Maybe they should stick to Klondike Solitare.”<br/>	“Winning isn't as important as not losing.</p>
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